Questionable content, possibly linked

So my Dunbar poly long practice chanter came in the mail on Monday, shortly after the Eclipse. They say the long is good because its the same length as the pipe chanter on the Great Highland Pipes. The right hand fingering feels pretty stretched for me as a newbie though, but I’m giving it a go regardless.

I have to admit that I forgot how frustrating learning a new instrument can be in the early stages especially.

I bought the first installment of the Bagpipe Solutions tutor book. It’s a PDF with embedded links to online sound files, and it seems fine. One thing I’ve discovered though, between that and my Youtube experiments is that learning the scale is NOT the first thing you should do.

Well, I mean it is, but not ‘as a scale’, but as individual notes. Trying to link them all together into a run is much too hard to get started. So instead, I’m focusing on just notes. Getting the low G to sound properly. Then going up through the next highest note, getting that to sound right, and so on. But for now, I’m only focusing on right-hand notes.

I don’t have a teacher, like they all say you should. But so far this is feeling better than the sad attempts I’ve been doing at getting through the scale all in one shot. Little by little. This isn’t going to happen overnight.